Three men told me their stories in Espanola, New Mexico. Three very different stories with one exception: for all of them, their name and mother tongue became an issue at one point in their lives.

Roberto started school in the '50s and, despite having the name of Santiago Luis Roberto Garcia, found himself suddenly addressed as “Bobby” by his white teacher in a classroom full of Hispanic children.

The same happened to Ricardo Guzmàn 10 years later. His teacher called him Richard.

Bernardo Perez’s last name singled him out when he joined the FBI in the '60s and was addressed as “the Spanish speaker.” Perez did not appreciate the term. Later, he sued the FBI for discrimination, but not for being offended by the epithet. Rather, the suit was brought after he and other Hispanics did not receive promotions in the same way as his Anglo-Saxon colleagues.

To speak Spanish on school grounds was once “verboten”-–forbidden–-in New Mexico, a state which is rich in traditional Hispanic and Pueblo Indian cultures. To be called “Mexican” was meant as an insult; even the name “Chicano,” today a symbol of self-determination and ethnic pride, was once considered a derogatory term for Mexicans.

Asked how the three define themselves today, the answers could not be more different. Bernardo Perez calls himself a “plain old American” and does not care much how people pronounce his last name. By the way, he and his colleagues won the class-action lawsuit.

Ricardo Guzmàn, the soft-spoken muralist, is Richard for his Anglo friends and Ricardo for his Hispanic friends. But he insists that you spell his last name right: Guzmàn, with an accent on the a.

And Roberto Garcia? The history teacher calls himself, with pride, a “Northern New Mexico cultural mosaic” with Hispanic, Native American, French, and Jewish blood in his veins. But please, don’t call him a “melting pot.” “I am who I am,” he says, “I know now that we all are unique.”